| Summary: | This study consists of four chapters. The first is a source critical analysis of the fragmented poem Rigsþula arguing that the poem, as we know it today, is an excerpt meant to support the editor behind the manuscript Codex Wormianus in his work listing words for male and female peasants that could be used as poetic metaphors in the 14th century on Iceland. The second study seek to demonstrated the parallels between on the one hand the Rigsþula fragment and the poem Fór Skínis and on the other the first four songs of the Hêliand poem, i.e. Song II-V. These essays therefore deal with the upper classes and the way they adjusted to Christianity and Paganism. The two last essays deal with nonsensical runes. The first centres on a group of Viking Age syllabic texts from Uppland. It is argued that they served as a form of galdr or rigmarole. The second deals with the early Iron-Age runes on weapons. They are considered to relate to what Taci-tus termed Barditus, the singing used by the Germans to judge the outcome of a battle. The Viking Age texts are considered to belong to a subculture, and against the background of the older texts they are seen as an example of a lower strata in society trying (in vain) to accommodate both old-fashioned invocations and modern, i.e. strophe-like compositions.
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